Review No.173: The Cold Light of Day

You wait for a review of a Bruce Willis film, or maybe you don't, but two come along at once nonetheless but if you were hoping for more of him after his handful of appearances in The Expendables 2 you may be disappointed. Despite appearing fairly prominently on the poster for The Cold Light of Day, Mr Willis' appearances add up to no more than about 15 minutes of the 90 minute run time so any fans of the Die Hard star who would be watching this film for him alone might want to look elsewhere. Willis plays Martin Shaw a man who has a job working for the government booking philharmonic orchestras or something to that effect, yeah right, and is currently in Spain with his family on a fishing trip. Arriving in Spain is his son Will, played by the new Superman Henry Cavill, who doesn't seem to have a great relationship with his father and they argue over Will's instance to make business calls while on the trip a decision that later injures his brother's girlfriend.  He goes to town to get some medicine for her but when he returns he finds his family missing and later discovers they have been kidnapped by some shadowy folks who want a briefcase back from his father who is in fact a CIA agent, shock horror! Will and Martin briefly reunite as we are introduced to his partner, Sigourney Weaver's Jean, who may or may not have turned against him to sell said briefcase and the bigger question is who exactly Will can trust. Later on in the film he meets a sexy senorita by the name of Lucia who  in addition to helping him escape may also be able to shed some light on his father's dealing in the past as the two have a slightly unbelievable connection. 

I think The Cold Light of Day has its roots firmly in the old school Alfred Hitchcock thrillers in which the action is all controlled by a MacGuffin, which for those not in the know is an object that moves the plot along even if it isn't that important, however that would be an insult to Hitchcock's collections of films. The MacGuffin here is the mysterious briefcase which everybody is after even though we never discover what is in it, though as Willis is here maybe it's Marcellus Wallace's soul, but I never once cared and that's the major problem with this film. There's a lot of running, jumping and shooting in the film however if it's all based on a plot point that you don't care about then everything seems a little bit pointless despite the fact that all the action sequences are fairly well shot. Personally I didn't think Henry Cavill was a particularly captivating lead but to be fair to the actor has little to work with playing a character who owns some sort of small business which is on the verge collapsing and who also has a poor relationship with his character. Willis is in his action movie default setting as he gets to both play the slightly brooding patriarch and the gun-wielding CIA agent in his brief time on screen in what amounts to no more than an extended cameo. The two performances I enjoyed were from Sigourney Weaver who makes for a tremendous central villain and British actor Joseph Mawle has her creepy henchman. The Spanish setting also means that the running, jumping and shooting gets some lovely backdrops to be shot against but I don't think this is fully utilised as there are more sequences in dingy clubs and dark houses than there on the streets of Spain. Though I did like seeing Weaver brandishing a gun and being badass there's only so much of that you can take in one film and due to the lack of any decent characters and a story that is fairly one-dimensional I got bored of The Cold Light of Day fairly quickly. 

Verdict: Though the Spanish backdrop and Sigourney Weaver's villainous turned did provide brief highlights overall The Cold Light of Day suffers from an uninvolving leading man, a threadbare plot and fairly dull action scenes so for that reason I'll have to give it 4.5/10

Review No.59: The Cabin in the Woods

 Sometimes it's very hard to write a review about a film without spoiling any aspect of it so apologies in advance if I give away anything too much but I've had a glance at some other write-ups of the film so know what and what not to include. The film itself, co-written and produced by Joss Whedon, has been in developmental hell for years finally being released ahead of its producer's helming of The Avengers Movie. While Whedon is busy with his superheroes it is left up to the other co-writer Ben Goddard to direct a story about five college students who are all going off to the titular cabin to drink, get stoned and have sex with one another. We think we've see this all before with the stereotypes all covered from the slutty one to the jock via the intelligent one and the drug addict however Goddard and Whedon play with our perceptions almost instantly after the youngsters get to the cabin. Obviously as you can ascertain from the trailer not all is as it should be and there is another plot away from the woods which involves two middle-management types played by Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins. It is the scenes featuring Jenkins and Whitford in their office that were the most entertaining as at times their snappy delivery of the one-liners made me think I was watching a horror as if scripted by Aaron Sorkin.

The Cabin In The Woods - Trailer #1 [VO|HD] by addictomovie
My main problem with Cabin in the Woods is that we were given little reason to care about the group of five going to the cabin and we knew only very little about them. I know to an extent that that's the point as often in the young teen slasher movie genre the characters are flimsy and the acting is atrocious so maybe this is Whedon and Goddard's way of mocking those genre conventions. At the end of the day though shoddy acting is shoddy acting and I particularly thought Jesse Williams as the bookish yet handsome Holden was so wooden that he blended it with the walls of the cabin from time to time. What Whedon and Goddard do right is in asking the question what if there was something more behind those crappy horror films that we often watch and why do the teens always split up when terror strikes? The last twenty minutes or so is when the film reaches its most entertaining however those are the moments that I can't talk about. It's clear that the writers know their horror as they spoof the Japanese shock horror genre as well as the main mockery of the teens alone in the wood together. I can't say that I was ever scared but I was never bored either laughing at the witty interplay between Whitford and Jenkins or intrigued by what direction the plot would take. True if you think about anything too much you can unravel parts of the plot but overall a clever plot coupled with some decent performances from its veteran cast members means that this is a step above your normal mainstream horror film.

Verdict: While it may favour concept over quality in periods ultimately The Cabin in the Woods is an entertaining ride to which I will give 8/10

Review No.8: Rampart

A couple of year's ago I happened upon a film called The Messengers it didn't really do much box office here in the UK but it did get some awards buzz for Woody Harrelson who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars. In Rampart Harrelson is reunited with director Oren Moverman as well as co-stars Ben Foster and Steve Buscemi to play Dave Brown a Los Angeles Police Officer who is described as the last renegade police officer. Brown is involved in the infamous Rampart scandal in which many officers were accused and tried of various crimes including unprovoked beatings and shootings both of which we see Brown engage in throughout the film. Brown's notoriety has come through his gunning down of a man accused of being a serial date rapist and as a result he has been given the name Date Rape Dave something his elder daughter revels in calling him. Throughout the film Dave beats up someone who rams into his car and later stages being attacked to take the heat off of him trying to take money during an illegal card game. As the story progresses Dave's lies and his life start to unravel as he isn't able to manipulate people the way he used to do.

The main problem with Rampart was that I never really warmed to the character of Dave who is someone that is constantly trying to get out of situations by bribing people or talking down to them and by his own admission doesn't like anybody. Harrelson was so great in The Messengers because he was part of a double act with Ben Foster but here Foster has a minor role and Woody is on the screen in almost every scene. He does a good job with what he's given but the script is riddled with stereotypes and tries to emulate the old noirish crime films of the 1970s but fails miserably. The moody lighting and mumbling characters only really works if the story is strong enough to back it up but I didn't really feel like that ever happened during Rampart. There are also some wildly miscast actors including Sigourney Weaver as Dave's police chief and Ice Cube as the man trying to bring him to justice. What I did like was Dave's relationship with his two daughters and I thought both Harrelson and the two young actresses were able to get across this complicated situation very well. But I never really warmed to Rampart because I found it slow-moving and very one dimensional which is a shame as I was really expecting to enjoy another film from the team behind The Messengers but this wasn't to be the case.

Verdict: Mainly down to Harrelson's performance this gets a 4/10